Hedge fund's comeuppance | Affordable butlers

What do a formerly high-flying hedge fund and African poverty have in common? More than you might think.

In this week's print issue, reporter Aaron Elstein tells the story of Och Ziff, whose 42% revenue drop was the biggest on the new Crain's list of New York City's largest publicly traded companies. The story involves corruption and the extraction industries in poor African nations, two factors that keep many of the world's nations poor.

Surprisingly, nations with valuable resources in the ground often have weaker economies than those that don't. Why? Civil wars are fought over who gets to plunder them, and the resources are spent to perpetuate those wars rather than to invest in human capital. And corruption takes hold, dragging down GDP.

So when Och Ziff got caught up in a bribery scandal in an struggling African nation with a valuable commodity in the ground, it fed into all of those problems. It's something to think about when hedge fund magnates attend fundraising galas to aid those countries. Read Elstein's story here.

Can you afford a butler? Maybe

Butlers aren't just for the filthy rich any more. Now they are part of the sharing economy.

Behold city-based Hello Alfred, which will keep your fridge stocked, plants watered and apartment clean. It has a cool name, too. Now it's signing deals to bring its butler service to apartment buildings across the country. Matthew Flamm has the story.

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